Newspaper Page Text
Il l ■■ A ■ MB St BELIEF g
i ßa i%i | i | #%ni ji ■
AL
♦ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2007
4A
Daniel F. Evans
President
Editor and Publisher
Julie B. Evans
Vice President
Softball support
The billboard just down the hill from Perry High
School reads something like: “Something new
begins” and has a Perry Panther (symbolizing
the football team bursting through it. Prophetic?
Apparently.
If you were at Peach County High School this
past weekend and saw Perry beat the Trojans
48-28 your answer
to that ques
tion would be an
emphatic: “Yes!”
The win for the
Panthers ended
18 years of frustra
tion not only on the
gridiron but deep
within the heart of
the community.
As one coach
put it a couple of years back as he stood on the
sidelines before a game and frustratedly looked
up at the empty bleachers one week following a
loss to Peach County: “It doesn’t matter how suc
cessful we are throughout the year. If we don’t
beat Peach, people think we’ve failed.” That
was, by the way, a year in which the Panthers
finished 8-4, which included making it through
to the second round of the state playoffs. No,
you’re right. It shouldn’t be that way but it is, or
has been, part of that mindset justifiable. After
all, for many years now the road to the state title
has led through Peach.
There’s still a long way to go. Perry is 4-3 over
all and 2-1 in the sub-region. It needs, however,
only get past Southwest - currently with a 1-6
record - and Northeast - currently 5-2 overall
and also 2-1 in the sub-region, and it’s entirely
possible the Panthers could take the top seed
(and guaranteed home games) into the post
season.
Yes, it’s true. In the most recent past, all roads
to becoming AAA champions might have led
through Fort Valley.
Now, perhaps they will lead through Perry.
Letters to the editor
Congress should cultivate friends
Turkey’s authorization of incursions into Iraq has many
American congressmen upset; although it appears
that Turkey is simply protecting its border - something the
American Congress obviously does not understand.
This bunch of Congressional do-nothings also wants
to label the killing of Armenians, by Turks of the Ottoman
Empire, as genocide. If the Turks actually did this, although
nobody is around to testify, it only parallels America’s action
during the American holocaust when the United States
Army was sent out to eliminate the American Indians. What
brand of muddleheaded idiots came up with the genocide
idea anyway?
Today, more than any other time in American history,
the need for international friends, such as Turkey, is of the
greatest importance. Congress should concentrate their
efforts toward cultivating friends rather than enemies.
Congress has again proven that stupidity is not a handi
cap in American politics.
Walter Huckeba, Perry
Children should have been top priority
I am a lifelong registered Democrat who lives in Houston
County. I have voted for Representative Jim Marshall
in the past, but I will not him in the upcoming election. I
did not and do not support the undeclared war in Iraq. Yet I
continued to support Marshall’s decision to vote otherwise.
However, his vote against increasing health
care coverage for children has caused me to cast
my vote for someone else even if that person is in
See LETTER, page 6A
HOW TO SUBMIT:
There are three ways to submit a letter to the editor: E-mail it to
hhj@evansnewspapers.com, mail it to Houston Home Journal at
1210 Washington St., Perry, GA 31069, or drop it off at the same
location between 8 a m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Letters
should not exceed 350 words and must include the writer's name,
address and telephone number (the last two not printed). The
newspaper reserves the right to edit or reject letters for reasons of
grammar, punctuation, taste and brevity.
Foy S. Evans
Editor Emeritus
Don Moncrief
Managing Editor
"The win for the
Panthers ended 18
years of
frustration not only on
the gridiron but deep
within the heart of the
community."
Romney faces hurdles
From my own and others’ experi
ence, I’ve come to believe that
a presidential candidate’s reli
gion is usually thought to be a bigger
deal with voters than it really is.
Hubert Humphrey comes to mind.
He was the Minnesota U.S. sena
tor who almost became president in
1968. During a previous run for the
White House in 1960, Humphrey was
locked in a head-to-head showdown
with John F. Kennedy in West Virginia.
That state’s Democratic primary was
considered the make-or-break indica
tor of whether America would accept
Kennedy’s Catholicism.
Humphrey was running out of money
and momentum, but he managed to buy
time on a West Virginia TV station.
He fielded questions - unscreened
questions - from viewers on the tele
phone.
It all went wrong. The phone con
nections wouldn’t broadcast properly.
When they did, confusion reigned.
That mishap symbolized Humphrey’s
doomed candidacy. Kennedy won West
Virginia and thereby squelched the
idea that America feared a Kennedy
White House would be subordinate to
the Vatican. A new Insider Advantage/
Majority Opinion survey of 486 reg
istered Republican voters in South
Carolina hints that the Palmetto State
may be a West Virginia-caliber hurdle
for Mitt Romney’s candidacy.
We asked:
“Are you aware that Mitt Romney is
of the Mormon faith?”
Yes: 88 percent
No: 12 percent
Next, we asked:
2**7
Life, love and ... robots?
Musings on the strange, heartening news of the day
So much news ... So much worth
commenting on ....
There never seems to be a
shortage of noteworthy reports or
events these days. Instead of focusing
on one issue this week, I’ve decided
to muse on a few that have recently
caught my attention.
Here’s one for the “bizarre” file.
A story published by Live Science
reported on a British researcher who
was just awarded a doctorate after
he published a paper about marriage
between humans and robots. Dr. David
Levy sincerely believes that the day
will come when men and women will
actually marry robots. He points out
that the technology to make machines
appear more humanlike already exists.
Not to mention the ability to program
them with those essentials for mar
riage, like shared interest and fond
ness. He’s even gone so far as to predict
that by the year 2050 Massachusetts
will be the first state to legalize such
marriage.
Reading this left me unsure whether
I should be amused, creeped out, or
just plain scared. The proposition that
humans would not only enter romantic
relationships with robots, but also get
married to them seems absurd, but not
to Mr. Levy. He believes “once you have
Matt
Toweiy .
Columnist
Morris News Service
“Would Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith
make you more or less likely to vote for
him in the South Carolina primary?”
More likely: 13 percent
Less Likely: 45 percent
Don’t know/undecided: 42 percent
The survey was conducted Oct. 17. It
has a margin of error of plus or minus
4.5 percent, and has been weighted for
age and gender.
At face value, these numbers appear
to make Romney’s effort in the first
Deep South primary to be about more
than just winning or losing X number
of delegates. It could also signal wheth
er the country as a whole is ready for a
Mormon president.
Romney has been portrayed by many
in the GOP as the logical candidate
for so-called “religious right” voters
- those who might be disappointed that
Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani
is pro-choice and who also are aware
that John McCain traditionally has
problems in South Carolina.
In fact, the son of the late Bob Jones of
Bob Jones University endorsed Romney.
That institution is a center for conser
vative education in South Carolina and
is known for it elsewhere.
But Jones equivocated in his endorse
ment of Romney. In essence, he said
Randy
Hicks
Columnist
Georgia Family Council
a story like ‘I had sex with a robot,
and it was great!’ appear someplace
like Cosmo magazine, I’d expect many
people to jump on the bandwagon.”
The author of the Live Science article
made the interesting observation that
the idea of having sex with a robot
“might be considered geeky.” Geeky?
Sitting at home all day playing with
a Rubik’s Cube while watching Star
Wars is geeky. I have a better adjective
- it’s creepy!
Perhaps one day such “marriages”
will take place. I certainly hope they do
not. There are always people in society
who are willing to do anything, no mat
ter how crazy it sounds to the rest of
us, for the purpose of gaining attention
or money. But the obvious fact remains
that no matter how you fashion or
program a machine, it cannot come
anywhere close to matching human
relationships, especially marriage.
JflV
A.
Pi *
lisT ? I A
B' ' - B
HOUSTON HOME JOURNAL
he’s behind Romney because Romney
has the best chance of winning the gen
eral election for president. But Jones
also explicitly rejected the tenets of the
Mormon faith.
Our poll shows that this two-sided
endorsement may or may not help
Romney. We asked a third question:
“Are you aware that Bob Jones 111
has endorsed Mitt Romney for presi
dent?”
Yes: 58 percent
No: 42 percent
If you consider that at least one
recent poll shows that Romney leads in
. South Carolina with 26 percent of the
Republican vote, then he may already
have captured the top spot or be in a
position to do so.
Should a candidate’s religion mat
ter in the 21st century? Certainly not.
Does it matter? Probably not.
Kennedy proved almost a half-cen
tury ago that biases against certain
religions can be overcome. But unlike
Kennedy, whose Roman Catholic faith
was considered a prominent issue early
in the campaign, Romney has yet to
face down the question of his “exotic”
religion and its founding document,
The Book of Mormon.
When the presidential primary sea
son accelerates into high gear and the
gloves come off, the attacks on Romney
and his religion will come - maybe
through sneak attacks, like a thief in
the night, but they will come.
Romney, in today’s far wackier world,
might get by with simply saying he
has not nor will he ever watch HBO’s
program about Mormons and polygamy,
“Big Love.” It just might work.
Marriage is an emotional, social and
even spiritual union that cannot be
duplicated by engineering or science.
Marriage between man and machine
would not just be a strange alterna
tive—it would be a demeaning coun
terfeit.
Now one for the “softer side of family
life” file.
There was a heartwarming story
in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
about a family in Lawrenceville,
Georgia, who adopted a little boy from
China. Bill and Amanda Burke, though
already the proud parents of three bio
logical children followed through with
a decade-long dream inspired by their
Christian faith to adopt another child
into their home.
The Burkes said their action was in
part a fulfillment of the Biblical call in
James 1:27 that says, “Religion that
God our Father accepts as pure and
faultless is this: to look after orphans
and widows in their distress and to
keep oneself from being polluted by
the world.”
It’s always exciting to hear about
families who adopt. This is particu
larly close to my heart as Marilyn and I
have adopted five children of our own.
What really caught my attention about
See HICKS, page 6A